Evaluation.

Our brief was to film the opening sequence of a new thriller film, including titles, aimed at 15 or 18 certificate audience, approximately two minutes in duration.

The people I worked with for this project were: Laura Henshaw, Ian Austin and Joe McKeown.


In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
To ensure our product fulfilled the brief of being a Thriller we decided to follow a few of the most popular Codes and Conventions of Thrillers, including the Question & Answer model, the Transformed City and Protraction and Concealment. We used these because after watching and analyzing the examples of Thriller films (section 1) we found these were the most popular and effective. Our opening sequence is set in an ordinary safe looking house, thus following the theory of The Transformed City; we also used ordinary safe looking Characters. We used our Killer as the exotic as his appearance was of an ordinary person; this was so the Audience would not automatically assume things, that he was definitely the killer, from the very beginning. To include elements of Concealment and Protraction, we did not make it clear who this man was or why he was in this house or what he was doing in the girl’s bedroom. This was to create suspense and tension and also to keep the audience asking questions such as: ‘who is he?’ ‘What is he doing?’ ‘Who is the girl?’ ‘Why is he there?’ following the Question and Answer model. Although, as we saw in the majority of the examples of thriller films we watched, the killers or victims face and Identity or what they are doing is rarely shown in the opening sequence to follow Pascal Bonitze’s theory of Partial Vision, we did not follow this theory and the face of our Characters and what they are doing is shown from the beginning. We did this as we did not feel it was important as to weather the killers face was revealed at the beginning or not as the storyline allows the killers identity to be known to the audience rather than them having to figure it out, this is different to most Thrillers. We decided to make the narrative structure of our opening linear. We tried to use a wide range of different camera angles to make our product interesting to watch, we used a few low angle shots in the scenes including the killer to make him look powerful and superior. Whereas in the scenes with the girl, the victim, we used a few high angle shots to show her vulnerability. We used a few close ups to emphasize certain aspects, such as the knife in the kitchen and also to highlight some of the things the killer was doing in the bedroom, for example sorting through the wardrobe and cuddling the teddy bear, to make them seem more abstract and creepy. Our Thriller also challenges the genre by showing our killer and aligning the audience with them during the opening sequence which then makes the audience assume the film is going to follow the killer throughout. We did this in a similar way to ‘American Psycho’ an example of a thriller we watched during our research into other products. (For a full analysis of our product see section 12.)



How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our product presents particular social groups in the way everybody would expect, the way society perceives different social groups though they know it is not entirely true. For example, we represent males as ‘creepy stalkers’ and as the gender more likely to kill. We used a male character as the killer, as this is the stereotypical killer seen in most thriller films. We also chose to do this because; from our audience research (see section 4) we found that the majority of people would expect the killer to be male. We chose to use a female victim, therefore our product represents females as the weaker sex, who are vulnerably and more likely to become victims to males. We decided on a female victim because we think that this presentation of females in stereotypically assumed by most of society. Our product also represents ‘mentally ill’ people as scary and dangerous ‘killers’. We used the idea of our killer being ‘mentally ill’, he had escaped from a mental institute, as there is an existing social issue of the ‘mentally ill’ all being grouped together and labeled as dangerous we thought this could be good to use.



What kind of media Institution might distribute your media product and why?
It is possible that companies such as U.K Screen or the U.K Film Council would distribute or film, as these are British lower budget companies that like independent work and home grown talent. It could also be possible for our to be shown in a mainstream cinema as the content is suitable however some people may disagree and say it is not good enough, compared to professional film, it may be seen as amateur. Also it is rare for a cinema to distribute a lower budget film as apposed to a high budget professional film. We could upload our product onto YouTube and see how many views it receives and how popular it is on here, and then use that information to decide whether it is good enough to be digitally distributed. If our production were to be digitally distributed and shown in mainstream cinemas this would be much better for the publicity and would probably result in it being viewed by a much larger audience. However, it could also result in a lot of bad publicity as, if it were shown in a mainstream cinemas, this could possibly higher people’s expectations and therefore make our thriller not seem as good.


Who would be the audience for your media Product?
The target audience for our project would be people who enjoy psychological thrillers, people who like to think and try to work things out because the general conventions of a psychological thriller are twisted plots full of mazes and mind tricks. We decided on this type of thriller because using our audience research we found this was the most popular type of thriller and we wanted to appeal to as large an audience as we could as we wanted our film to be popular and widely watched. The audience would also have to be of people over the age of 15 as we rated our film a 15. This is due to scenes of a violent nature we imagined would be included in our film, so it would not be suitable for people under the age of 15. We decided to classify our product as a 15 rather than an 18 so as we could appeal to a larger audience, and we had decided not to make it too violent and gory as some people do not like that. Our product may appeal to people outside of our target audience; it could still appeal to people under the age of 15 who enjoy watching thrillers.



How did you attract/address your audience?
We addressed our audience through conducting some audience research, so as we could find out what would attract an audience. We made a questionnaire to hand out to people we expected our target audience to be, to fill in. We asked them questions such as ‘what is your favourite/least favorite type of thriller?’, ‘would you rather be scared or intrigued?’ ‘What do you find scary?’ ‘What would you expect from a bad character?’ etc. (see section 4 for full questionnaire).We used the results of this to decide on what elements to include in our production which would make it appropriate. For example, we found from our research that the most popular type of thriller is a psychological thriller so we decided to produce a psychological thriller. We also found that most people would expect more tension building than violence so we did not include much violence and tried to create a lot of tension. We found that most people would associate the colour red and creepy music with a thriller and that the sound of heavy breathing is what made people scared, so when adding graphics and sound we used the colour red and the sound of loud breathing. We also found that in some areas we had to compromise things to make it suitable for a larger audience, for example we found that 50 % of the people we asked preferred to be scared whereas 50 % preferred to be intrigued so we tried to make our production scary but not too scary and also intriguing.
When coming up with our final ideas for our thriller, using the audience research, we decided we wanted to make our audience feel mostly intrigued, so as to make them want to watch the rest of the film, if it were to have been made. We also wanted to make them feel scared and on edge.
The feedback we received from our audience was fairly positive, (see section 11 for full conclusions.) We found that our choice of camera angles and music was effective, and the majority of people enjoyed the storyline. We tried to use a variety of interesting camera angles to keep the audience interested and we found, from our audience research, that the audience liked our camera angles. And they thought that the music created suspense, as it was intended. We found that most people thought that our graphics were appropriate and set the scene and the characters were believable.


What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Our final product differs from our original plan shown on our Story Boards (section 10) as during the filming we came up with new ideas for more interesting shots and camera angles. For example we had to lie on the floor with the camera to get a good low angle shot of the killer. Or one of us had to stand on a ledge to get a good high angle shot.
I found using the Premier editing software fairly easy to use. To create our sequence we put all of our footage onto the computer, capturing it in the editing software. We chose our best shot that we wanted to use and clicked and dragged them onto the timeline in the right order to make them flow as a complete sequence. In the beginning of our production, the bedroom scene, we did not do a lot of editing, we added a few dissolves between shots to make them flow a little smoother but we found that most of our shots seemed to run smoothly. We added these dissolves by choosing one that we thought looked good from the menu and dragging in onto the timeline and placing it over the shots where we wanted it to happen. In the kitchen scene we used more special effects. We used a three layer shot at one point to increase the sense of urgency of the shot. We did this by layering 3 different shots on top of each other on the timeline, making them play at the same time. And we slowed down one shot, the knife shot, to emphasize the severity of it. We added sound effects and royalty free music that we found and downloaded over the internet. We found finding and added the music difficult as it was difficult to find ‘good’ music and sound effects that were useable, also the group had to decide together on something that we all felt worked well.
During the bedroom scene we found we had to record numerous takes of a few of the shots as we had a problem with the lighting. We found that we sometimes caught the shadow of the camera or the reflection in the window in our shots, to overcome this problem we had to experiment with different styles of shots. Also, we had to film the bedroom scene twice as after looking back at our original footage we found that our variety of shots was small and boring, we decided to re-film using more shots to make it more interesting to watch.



Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at the preliminary task I feel that my skills in general have improved. For example my editing skills, as in the walking through the door task the editing I used was fairly minimal whereas in this coursework task the editing was more elaborate. We were able to use more dissolves between shots and also could experiment with other effects such as the 3 layer shot and the slow motion shot. Also, my knowledge of use of a video camera has improved as during the preliminary task we came across the problem of not leaving five seconds between each shot and found that some of our shots hadn’t worked properly due to this, and therefore we were more careful to avoid this whilst filming for our coursework. Also, the range of shots we used was more varied and thought about. If we hadn’t done the preliminary task I think our camera work would have looked a lot worse and our range of shots would have been much smaller and boring. Doing the preliminary task helped with my knowledge of how to use the camera well and which shot look best. I feel our production has fulfilled the terms of the brief to a standard, as we included codes and conventions of a Thriller and the storyline we used was suitable for a Thriller. Though I feel there are aspects where our production could be improved. For example I think our storyline was a little boring and not very intriguing or scary. Also, when we were filming we did not pay much attention to the lighting; if I could I would change the lighting maybe to create a more eerie atmosphere, suitable for our thriller.